‘The Movement’: from Survivalism to Sustainability

Abstract

The 1960s saw the last spasm of colonialism in the wake of which an assortment of problems regarding imports and trade, natural resources, population growth and immigration, threatened the balance of the industrial nations. The Cold War, the arms race and the emerging evidence of environmental problems was accompanied by new scientific advice on the interrelated nature of ecological and economic processes. In Britain, the situation was particularly acute, since its waning world power was coupled with a process of deindustrialisation and economic decline. It is in this context that we should consider The Ecologist, a magazine first published in 1970, and which ever since has combined ecological research with a distinctive ecological ideology, strongly influenced by the perceptions of its editor Edward Goldsmith. In 1972, The Ecologist published a Blueprint for Survival, hoping to establish an ecologically-based new philosophy of life which would instigate a Movement for Survival. The newly formed political party, PEOPLE, adopted the Blueprint as its first political manifesto. In 1973 the first national conference was held, and a Manifesto for Survival drafted on the basis of the Blueprint. In 1974 PEOPLE ran five candidates for the national elections (including Goldsmith), and as a result, some one hundred people joined the party. The first tensions arose, the founders of the party departed, and a new Manifesto for Sustainable Society — a document which was to play a central role in the ideological evolution of the Green Party — was written by the newcomers, and ratified by the national conference.